{"id":7761,"date":"2014-04-16T09:12:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/?p=7761"},"modified":"2014-04-16T09:12:53","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:12:53","slug":"adventures-in-eldercare-part-deux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/16\/adventures-in-eldercare-part-deux\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Eldercare, Part Deux"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is probably the last time I’ll be able to relieve my mother of\u00a0her eldercare duties<\/a>, for a while<\/a> anyway, so I drive up with Dad<\/a>, and they take off for the Berkshires.<\/p>\n

Some things are the same.<\/p>\n

“Here are the\u00a0dogs<\/em>!” Denture-smacking.\u00a0Cribbage shit-talk. Laughing at weird things: “‘Armed officer sends school into\u00a0lockdown<\/em>‘ ha ha ha.” Uncle\u00a0Russell still steadfastly refuses to glue his upper plate in and often takes it out and sets it on the coffee table while he gums his dinner. One night I hear a tickety-tickety and look up from my book to find Redford trying the dentures on for size. Thank god he didn’t bite down very hard.<\/p>\n

Some things are different.<\/p>\n

His hearing aids whistle and squeal nonstop now. Between that and the denture-smacking, at least I always know where he is.<\/p>\n

Also, Mom has started putting out a sign for him<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9003\"<\/a><\/p>\n

so he doesn’t accidentally double up on his meds. His Alzheimer’s pill enables him to be more accurate in counting his cribbage hands, but an extra dose makes him… frisky. Once, after a double dose, he walked up behind an in-home care person as she made brownies, pinched her rear end, and told her he wanted to sample her goodies.<\/p>\n

His vocalizing has ramped up too. Now it’s not just repeating newspaper headlines. It’s repeating them and repeating them and repeating them for 15 minutes at a time sometimes. If I had a dollar for every time I hear, “Drug treatment center gets new life<\/em>,” I’d probably have enough money to put him in a nursing home.<\/p>\n

“Disney club hits high note” is uttered almost as many times but with “high note” spoken an octave above the rest. It makes me giggle. The first 50 times.<\/p>\n

Sometimes he repeats phrases so many times and so quickly that they become unintelligible. “Twelve fifteen,” he says after glancing at his watch. (It’s 11:10.) “Twelve fifteen, twelve fitteen, twelve fittee, twalvittee, twalviddeetwalviddeetwalviddee… twalviddeetwalviddeetwalviddee.”<\/p>\n

One thing about Russell is he’s… well, I won’t say obsessive-compulsive, but he’s definitely fastidious. He likes things to be tidy and in their place.<\/p>\n

He mentions the piles of newspapers in the garage and how much they bother him. I suggest we take them to the town dump, and he likes that idea. About half of the load will fit in my trunk, which I figure is perfect, in case Mom is saving some for the wood stove or decoupage or something. I carry great stacks to the back of my car. He squares the corners of every pile. On the drive there, he mentions the dump sticker. Crap, I forgot you’re supposed to have a sticker on your car to get in.<\/p>\n

We pull up to the gate. I smile sweetly at the guy sitting on a utility stool outside the shed and explain the situation: my mom took her car on vacation, I’m caring for my great uncle, here’s his street address. “Well, you can’t go in unless you have a dump sticker,” says the man.<\/p>\n

Is there anything more frustrating and pathetic than a peon wielding the tiny bit of power he has? “Maddening,” says Russell. Agreed.<\/p>\n

We turn around and go home. Russell wants to unload the newspapers in the driveway. I tell him I don’t know when Mom’ll be home, and I don’t want them to get rained on. He’s very frustrated. I distract him by handing him a rake and the yard waste can. He starts picking up leaves and sticks, and I unload all the newspapers back into the garage. It’s fine. Later I find out Mom will put them under the mulch in her gardens to keep the weeds down.<\/p>\n

He’s restless. I’m listless. He needs a thing to do, but I don’t have the energy or knowledge to give him orders. Fortunately, two light bulbs have burned out, so we simply must take a trip to Stop & Shop to buy new ones. At home, he replaces them and is sated for a while.<\/p>\n

“When are these folks coming back then?” he asks. My parents.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know,” I say. Really, it can’t be soon enough for either of us.<\/p>\n

I remind myself once again that my mom has done this for nine years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is probably the last time I’ll be able to relieve my mother of\u00a0her eldercare duties, for a while anyway, so I drive up with Dad, and they take off for the Berkshires. Some things are the same. “Here are the\u00a0dogs!” Denture-smacking.\u00a0Cribbage shit-talk. Laughing at weird things: “‘Armed officer sends school into\u00a0lockdown‘ ha ha ha.” … Continue reading Adventures in Eldercare, Part Deux<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fambly","category-first-world-problems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7761"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7770,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761\/revisions\/7770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}